Just like Murphy predicted, something bad will always happen at the worst time and lo and behold, the database server went down as people started to wake up on early saturday and in particular, as Mack Male and Megan Fowler prepared to podcast from the Northern Voice Conference. Fortunately, essential services were restored and everything was fixed by the end of the day. So there you have it - Murphy, I hate you!
P.S. Server upgrades are probably not a good idea on the eve of such events.